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A Plan to Cut Cruise Ship Pollution

By Jake Mooney March 6, 2009 11:08 amMarch 6, 2009 11:08 am

Robert Stolarik for The New York TimesCruise ships near Red Hook, Brooklyn, are one of the area’s major sources of air pollution.

When it comes to air pollution in the New York City area, there is no shortage of places to cast blame. The Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of the local “nonattainment area” where pollutants regularly exceed federal air quality standards includes the city, northern New Jersey, Long Island and part of Connecticut.
In a territory that large, 6.5 tons of particulate matter emissions per year amount to a drop in the bucket. In context, the same goes for 99 tons of sulfur dioxide. Still, the chance to prevent pollution on that level is an exciting one, and two local agencies, the Port Authority and the city’s Economic Development Corporation, are hoping to do just that with a new initiative being planned for the Red Hook waterfront.

The culprits responsible for some of the pollutants, in this case, are cruise ships. When ships are docked at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, at Pier 12, their diesel engines continue running to maintain power to the ships’ electrical systems. And when the engines are running, there is smoke coming from the smokestacks — a lot of it.

An alternative, which came to prominence in recent years at West Coast ports including Los Angeles and Seattle, is requiring ships to plug into shore-based power and run off the local electrical grid.

This is known as “cold ironing,” and it is what the local agencies are hoping to institute in Brooklyn. If all goes well, they say, a system could be in place by 2011, and it could be the first on the East Coast — though other ports are considering similar ideas, too.

Cold ironing, and its local potential, are the subject of the Dispatches feature in this weekend’s City section. In short, the Port Authority and Economic Development Corporation, which control the cruise terminal, say they are committed to installing the system on shore.

They also say Carnival Cruise Lines, which operates most of the ships that use the terminal, has agreed to retrofit its vessels to use shore power. The remaining hurdle is finding a way to lower the cruise companies’ cost for using shore power instead of diesel, which is far cheaper.

The issue, spokespeople from the agencies said, is that the existing rate structure is set up for buildings, which use power at a steady, constant rate. A ship, on the other hand, requires a great deal of energy over a short period — often a day — before it moves on to another port.

Some of the added cost to the cruise companies — about $1.7 million a year, in addition to the retrofitting expenses — could be eased if the state Public Service Commission made an exception to lower its tariffs for shore-based cruise ship power. That is what the agencies that control the terminal are lobbying for the commission to do, and they have the support of governmental organizations from the United States Environmental Protection Agency to Brooklyn’s Community Board 6.

The latter organization passed a resolution this month in support of the lower tariffs. Craig R. Hammerman, the board’s district manager, said that what matters to area residents is decreasing the emissions.

“Obviously, we want a rate schedule that encourages ships to plug in and not emit what they are currently,” he said. “It doesn’t seem fair or logical for the cruise ships to have to pay such a high price to keep the air clean.”

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